POV third person
A heavy silence ruled over New Reno, broken only by the occasional screams of survivors. Some were found by Legion patrols sweeping the ruins like bloodhounds; others simply hadn't run far enough. The city, once alive with noise, gambling, drugs, and decadence, now lay in ruins under the disciplined shadow of the Legion.
The NCR garrison, under-equipped and poorly led, could not withstand the relentless assault of Legate Malpais's forces. The attack was swift and brutal. Hundreds of artillery pieces—transported and deployed with the ruthless efficiency only Legion discipline could produce—opened fire during the night. There had been no warning. Civilians who thought all was well paid for their illusion in blood.
The industrial zones were the first to vanish under the barrage. Next came command centers, communication towers, and supply depots. Survivors couldn't comprehend how the Legion knew exactly what to hit. But the answer was simple: they knew everything. Armed with stolen NCR intelligence, they struck every vital target with surgical precision.
The bodies of NCR soldiers were buried beneath rubble, crushed under collapsed walls or burned to ash in the explosions. Members of the Bishop family who tried to resist were executed one by one—not with spectacle, but with brutal efficiency. Anyone who might one day organize resistance was simply removed.
Those who didn't escape in time were rounded up and categorized. Drug addicts with no clear value were slaughtered outright—enslavement wasn't feasible for them. NCR soldiers were granted some measure of respect and sent to prisoner camps. Civilians were processed as captives and handed over to the Legion's slave-masters for conditioning. The strongest among them—those who endured, who resisted—were sent to the Fields of Mars, to be reforged as Legionaries in the machinery of the New Order.
Legate Malpais showed no emotion throughout the operation. He walked the ruins of the vice-ridden city like an executioner pacing around the body of his victim. Every alley, every burning den, every shattered casino was a testament to the end of an era—the end of weakness, of corruption—and the beginning of the order the Legion promised.
Legion banners already flew over the old city hall, the ruined Shark Club casino, and atop the Mordino Hotel, now repurposed as a provisional command center. From there, the centurions reorganized the city, sorted the captives, and compiled their reports for Gaius and Caesar.
The purge was fast. No unnecessary massacres, but no mercy either. New Reno would not be rebuilt as it once was. It would be redesigned. Tamed. Reborn as a future colony of Legion veterans.
Malpais was not finished. His gaze turned toward the roads leading to Vault City and Redding. But first, he would wait. The embers still smoked in New Reno—and he knew what came next. Vault City had a monster already marching toward it.
Lanius's Legion had not delayed its answer. His journey from Oklahoma to Utah had been swift, thanks to the vast rail network constructed on Gaius's orders—capable of moving entire legions with speed. Barely two days after the conflict resumed, the first detachments of Caesar's Butcher were already crossing into the north.
Unlike the armies of Malpais or the technologically equipped forces under Gaius, Lanius's legion had little in the way of modern machinery. They lacked heavy vehicles. Power armor units were rare. But these shortcomings didn't matter.
Lanius didn't need them.
He brought numbers. He brought discipline. And he brought brutality.
A horde as vast as a swarm, forged of veterans hardened in countless campaigns, sharpened to the bone, fanatically loyal to the will of Caesar. They matched the combined strength of Gaius and Malpais, and they marched without pause, without fear, without disorder. Wherever they passed, the ground trembled.
Their target was clear.
Vault City would not fall to artillery precision or espionage. It would be crushed beneath the weight of a legion without mercy, led by the most feared monster in the Wastes.
The outer defenses of Vault City were hit from all directions. Lanius's experienced troops applied every lesson from every war they'd fought—claiming the terrain as if it were their own, firing mortars with the accuracy of a thrown spear, and breaking fortified positions with the few—but deadly—Legionaries equipped with power armor.
Once the defensive lines began to buckle, the avalanche came. Men—more men—surging from every flank. A storm of flesh and steel.
Vault City, for the first time, felt what it meant to face the fury of Caesar's Butcher.
The defenders had prepared for a conventional war. Their plans accounted for a siege, for attacks along known routes, for visible threats. What they faced instead was chaos—unpredictable, relentless.
Every time they stabilized a defensive line, another was shattered by the Legion's momentum. Every retreat was met with more fire, more charges, more losses.
Medics improvised hospitals in the underground corridors. Rations began to run short by the third day. Automated turrets malfunctioned under constant fire, and attempts to reprogram them mid-battle cost more lives. Orders contradicted one another. Some officers called for a last stand; others wanted to open an escape route. No one knew how much longer they could last.
The civilian population, trapped beneath the city, lived in constant darkness, terrified of the tremors that heralded new explosions above. The shelters were no longer safe. Some vault doors gave way. Smoke crept down into the lower levels. Even the reinforced blast doors began to show signs of failure.
And while the city held on, the red banners outside drew closer. Each hill taken, each trench overrun, each defending squad annihilated—another nail in the coffin of once-proud Vault City.
The siege tightened. Slow. Methodical. Like a noose no one could cut.
At dawn on the fifth day, just when all seemed lost, several civilian vehicles were spotted approaching from the west—converted into makeshift troop transports. From them spilled disorganized groups of young recruits, wearing freshly issued uniforms and holding secondhand rifles.
They were conscripts.
They had managed to slip past Malpais's front, evading southern patrols. They came from Sacramento, from Modoc, even from Shady Sands.
But it remained to be seen whether they had arrived to reinforce a city—or to die in one.
They arrived with no formal training and no effective command structure—young, mostly inexperienced, thrown into the fire with more willpower than preparation. But they brought hope. And for now, that was enough to reignite the defenders of Vault City.
The conscripts knew that to reach the city, they would have to pass through Legion-patrolled zones. What they didn't know was that those patrols consisted of some of the most hardened veterans loyal to the Butcher himself.
A small group of NCR recruits managed to break through, fighting through a hellscape of fire and steel as they pushed past the outer Legion lines. Many were cut down before even getting close, but a few—exhausted, disorganized, trembling—reached the gates of Vault City, where they were received with a mix of relief and quiet resignation. They weren't trained reinforcements. They were barely soldiers—boys who couldn't reload a rifle without hesitation.
When Lanius's veterans saw the reinforcements, they didn't break formation or hesitate. They held with the kind of ferocity only Legionnaires could offer. Every centurion knew exactly how to shatter enemy morale: well-placed shots, immovable lines, and sudden flanking attacks.
The recruits were repelled. Forced to retreat to a safer zone to regroup. It wouldn't be their only attempt. But now they knew, without a doubt, what awaited them.
Hours later, another wave was organized—this time with more support, more weapons, more men.
But also more Legionnaires.
During the night, as the recruits reorganized, the Legion of Lanius had been reinforced. New cohorts had arrived by train from the south. The next battle wouldn't be easier.
Only bloodier.
With every passing hour, thousands more Legionaries arrived to reinforce the front. After three days of siege, Lanius's Legion was nearly fully deployed. Their sheer presence alone spread fear among the defenders.
Seeing an opportunity for total, unrestrained bloodshed, Lanius launched a twin offensive. With overwhelming numerical superiority, he ordered a direct assault on the newly arrived NCR reinforcements gathering in the east, while simultaneously commanding a full-scale attack on Vault City itself.
He led from the front.
Wearing a personalized suit of power armor adapted to integrate his iconic war mask, now linked to a full life-support exoskeleton, his figure was towering—a walking engine of destruction. Each step shook the ground, echoing through debris and trenches. Around him marched his Praetorians—the battle-hardened elite of countless campaigns—clad in reinforced power armor. With them marched the new Praetorians: genetically modified super mutants, titanic figures of muscle and steel.
At the center of the assault, Lanius shattered lines with his double-edged blade. The weapon—heavy, brutal—tore through barricades and bodies alike. Bullets sparked harmlessly off his armor. Explosions stalled him for seconds, only for him to emerge from the smoke and debris with even greater rage. Wherever he appeared, NCR lines collapsed. Some tried to flee. Others didn't even get the chance.
They were torn apart by the wrath of Caesar's Butcher, who had come to collect blood for every day of peace the Republic dared to maintain.
While Lanius crushed the outer defenders, his centurions led the push inside the city. Entry was achieved through breaches opened in previous days, exploiting damage from artillery and air strikes. The Legion poured in—wave after wave, systematic and merciless.
Urban combat was savage. House by house, street by street, the Legion cleared sectors. Flamethrowers were used to purge buildings harboring snipers or entrenched civilians. No distinction was made between combatant and non-combatant if obedience was not immediate. Many civilians perished under collapsed buildings or were incinerated, caught in crossfire or executed for defiance.
Hospitals and shelters were seized without hesitation. Those who did not surrender were eliminated.
Vault City's defenders—civilians with arms or last-minute militia—tried to resist. But against hardened veterans and soldiers clad in power armor wielding assault rifles, their resistance was futile. Many were massacred in their homes or at improvised checkpoints.
The Legion had no interest in preserving the city as it was. Its goal was to break the spirit of Vault City—to prove that neither its supposed genetic purity nor its technocratic order could withstand the judgment of iron and fire. And it succeeded.
The administrative center was burned. Power stations collapsed. Server banks were looted. Its leaders were executed or captured.
The air filled with smoke, screams, and ash. To the few survivors, the sky itself seemed aflame. From a hill to the west, Lanius watched it all—his silhouette wreathed in the fire consuming the once-proud technocratic city.
Amid the ruins, through the last gasps of resistance, a man emerged from the smoke with steady steps. He wore no NCR uniform. No Vault City insignia. But his very presence caused the mutant Praetorians to stop cold.
"I remember… that helmet… that walk… the footage from the Enclave oil rig," growled one of the giants, his voice deep and heavy with memory.
The other nodded, tensing, gripping his weapon tighter as his eyes scanned the stranger.
Lanius came to a halt.
Before him stood the man who had ended the Enclave's abomination.
The Chosen One.
They stared at each other in silence. One, Caesar's brutal champion. The other, the living symbol of the old world's defiance.
There were no words. No speeches.
Only a pause.
A moment before the inevitable.
Between them, nothing remained to be settled—except on the battlefield.